Western Digital says it has lost at least 6.5 exabytes (6.5 billion gigabytes) of flash storage due to contamination issues at Western Digital’s joint venture partner’s NAND production facilities. As per the law of supply and demand, the contamination could see the price of NAND chip spike up to 10 percent.
The contamination could see the price of NAND — the main component of SSDs — spike up to 10 percent, according to market research firm TrendForce. Any potential NAND shortages or price fluctuations could affect the PC market over the next few months, which had another big year in 2021 despite global chip shortages and demand for GPUs.
The contamination of materials used in the manufacturing processes appears to have been detected in late January at two plants in Japan, with Western Digital’s joint venture partner, Kioxia (previously Toshiba), revealing it has affected BiCS 3D NAND flash memory.
It’s not clear what caused the contamination, whether products on the market will need to be recalled, or when production will resume.
MacDailyNews Take: Ai yi yi.
Western Digital is an Apple supplier. Kioxia NAND chips are used in many Apple products, including the iPhone 13 family, the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro, and iPad Pro.
Fortunately, Apple’s margins on storage are, as we all know, fat enough to absorb just about any hit. Cut-rate consumer-grade PC peddlers won’t be so lucky.
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SSD Flash
Ah-ah
Saviour of the mutiiverse
SSD Flash
Ah-ah
Contaminate every one of us
SSD Flash
Ah-ah
It’s a miracle
(This mornings unprecedented contamination is cause for alarm)
SSD Flash
Ah-ah
What was once impossible
Flash is for every one of us
Save for every one of us
It’ll save with a mighty NAND
Every man, every woman, every child with a mighty SSD Flash
SSD Flash
Ah-ah
(WD’s alive)
SSD Flash
Ah-ah
Contaminate every one of us
Just a NAND, with a NAND’s courage
It knows nothing but a NAND
But it should never fail
No one but the pure and smart will find they never fail
Oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
SSD Flash, Flash, I love you when you’re not contaminated
But we only have 14 hours to save 6.5 billion gigabytes from being dug into the earth
SSD Flash
Let’s put this into a more reasonable scale factor. A common SSD size today is 1 TB. This then equates to 6,5 million drives. Sales studies estimate about 4 million SSD sales each week. So this is less than two weeks sales. Plus SSD sales are only growing with the average size drive getting larger and larger.
It’s a significant impact, but absolutely not catastrophic.
Oh for crying out loud.
Sounds like a con to raise prices.
Well thank goodness Apple has been gouging us with SSD prices for all these years that they can withstand thus two week hiccup.